


Beyond the Fence

by Lohrendrell



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Geralt wasn't the first witcher Jaskier talked to, Slice of Life, Some Fluff, The Pankratz aren't The Worst, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lohrendrell/pseuds/Lohrendrell
Summary: Beyond the fence surrounding the Lettenhove family manor, there once lived a witcher.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion & Other Witcher(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 44
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #010





	Beyond the Fence

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at the Witcher Flash Fiction Challenge!

Beyond the fence surrounding the Lettenhove family manor, there once lived a witcher.

Julian only really became aware of his presence when he was four. Quite late, considering that the witcher was almost always there—not so much in the winters, but sometimes in the spring, and always in the summer—either chopping wood, or trimming wool from his sheeps, or training his horses. All things the servants did on a regular basis, and so it took the boy a while to realize the man wasn’t _supposed_ to be part of the scenario.

“Because he’s different,” his mother told him when Julian asked why. “He’s not from here.”

“Here in Lettenhove?”

“Here with us, Julian. He’s a monster killer, not a human like us. A mutant.”

The witcher’s lands hadn’t always belonged to him, but to his late granduncle Karl. The story Julian had been told claimed that the witcher was gifted that property through the Law of Surprise on a fateful summer day, when he saved his father, the Count de Lettenhove, from some bandits on the road. Granduncle Karl had passed away from old age just a few days earlier, leaving his share of family properties for the Count to decide how to deal with them.

(“You were lucky it weren’t you,” his cousin Ferrant told him one day, “because you were already in your Mum’s belly when the Count arrived home with the witcher on toll.”)

“Can we go say hi to him?” Julian asked one day, watching from the backyard table the witcher marking his sheeps with paint.

His Mum was having a tea party with his aunts while Julian played on the grass. “No, Julian,” she said abruptly, forgetting that she was laughing at some joke his aunt had told. “Leave him be. You must never talk to the witcher.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so. Don’t you ever dare to approach him, do you hear me? Don’t you dare.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Don’t disobey me on this, Julian.”

“I won’t.”

Julian went to see the witcher when he was six.

“Hi!”

He was hopping on the fence—or trying to, it was kind of too tall for him—in order to see the witcher properly.

The witcher looked up from his task of washing his horse. A big black stallion that Julian secretly named Midnight, because he disappeared in the landscape at sleeptime, after all the oil lamps had been turned off, no matter how much Julian tried, from his bedroom window, to concentrate on spotting him. He used to draw Midnight with big red eyes, but stopped once he realized the grown ups thought it meant the horse was evil.

The witcher stared at Julian, then at Midnight, and then back at Julian. He looked a little scared, but before he could say anything, one of the servants picked Julian up from the fence and dragged him back into the manor.

Julian tried again two weeks later.

“Hi! I’m Julian!”

The witcher didn’t look at him. “You shouldn’t be here, little lord.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sure your Lady Mother has forbidden you.”

“No, she did not,” Julian lied. “She said I can always make new friends!”

The witcher chuckled. “Even with a witcher?”

“Espec—Escpecia—”

“Especially.”

“Yeah, that! With a witcher.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

Learning his mistakes from experience, Julian climbed a little better on the fence this time, lifting himself until he could see over the fence, managing to balance himself up on the lower line of horizontal line of wood.

“What are you doing?” he asked the witcher.

“Trimming the wool of my sheeps.”

“What do you do with that?”

“I sell it to a family who uses it to sew clothes.”

“And then you buy yourself some candyfloss?”

“Is that what you do with your money?”

Julian nodded. “The other day my Mum didn’t realize she gave me the big coin purse instead of the little one, and I bought a bunch!” He snickered.

The witcher laughed. “And where is your Mother, Little Lord?”

“Napping. She said my sister is messing her up a bit today.”

“Your sister?”

“Mmhmm.” Julian nodded. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Yes?”

Julian leaned over the fence as best as he could and, cupping his mouth, whispered, “I think my sister is actually a wormbug.”

“What’s a wormbug?”

“It’s a monster! It’s a bug and a worm and it makes you sick. You never saw one?”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t exist, Little Lord. Where is your sister?”

“In Mum’s belly. She said she’s expected to be here by next autumn.”

The witcher laughed. “Your sister is no wormbug, Little Lord, she is just growing in your Lady Mother’s belly. Your Mum is pregnant.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s still a wormbug.”

The witcher was smiling—he had no fangs, just a normal set of teeth, Julian noticed, disappointed. “How do you even know it’s a sister, not a brother?”

Julian shrugged. “Mum said she can sense these things.”

“And your Nanny? Where is she?”

“I told her I was going to go nap with Mum!” Julian snickered. “Can I tell you another secret?”

“Yes?”

This time, the witcher leaned in a little bit, and laughed even harder when Julian told him, “Margareth kisses Bartek behind the stables when they think no one else is looking.”

“Really? They do that?”

“Yeah! I caught them twice already! She said they were just talking, but I know kissing. Mum and Father do that _all the time_.”

“You should tell the Count and the Countess, then.”

“No, because everytime I catch them Margareth gives me an extra sweet cake for dinner.”

The witcher laughed even harder. “Little Lord, you truly are your father’s son.”

That made Julian smile with pride. “Of course I am! My Mum even says we are the same lot of stubborn.”

“Master Julian!” came Margareth’s voice from somewhere behind him. She was running towards them. “You can’t be here! Get off there right this second.”

Julian managed to turn back to the witcher before Margareth snatched him away. “Bye,” he said, waving. The witcher waved back.

It had been just a quick encounter, but it solidified something in Julian that he would only realize it existed many years later: the conviction that everyone else was wrong about the true nature of witchers.

(“They say witchers steal children to make soup when they’re hungry,” his cousin always said, but Julian never believed him, even before he met one.)

It became a tradition after that. Julian would find every excuse he could to sneak out, climb on the fence, and talk to him. At first it had been difficult. Julian had caused a whole new kind of fuss in the household, and every single one of the servants were ordered to always keep an eye out to make sure Julian wasn’t sneaking out to the fence again. The witcher disappeared for the rest of the summer, and didn’t come back again well into the next spring.

Eventually, though, his sister Antoinette was born. Julian quickly learned that a new baby in the family meant less attention, but also more freedom.

Whenever his witcher neighbor was home, Julian spent hours talking to him, balancing himself on top of the fence separating their properties. He learned of the witcher schools, of the many monsters he and other witchers faced. He learned that his neighbor had another home other than in Lettenhove, the place he was raised (“You can’t know where it is?” was the answer when Julian asked if he could visit someday. “Because it’s a secret. Because some people do bad things to our home when they learn where it is.”). He had brothers too.

In exchange, Julian taught him all about the history of ancestors, from the great-great-great uncle who assisted some ancient king in some war and was gifted those lands and their title, to the distant weird cousin who played some weird instrument that Julian once heard and liked very much. He told the witcher of the latest court gossip he overheard his parents discussing, even though he never really understood the appeal of it all. He also shared his sweetcakes, because it was another thing Julian had quickly learned: it was better to eat sweetcakes in good company than alone. They tasted better that way.

One day, when he was eight, the witcher brought him a present.

“It’s a lute,” he said. “The instrument your cousin plays. Now you can learn to play it for yourself. You can even write your own songs..”

“Thank you!”

Life went on pretty uneventful, and the lands surrounding Lettenhove became quite free of monsters for a good few years. In the summer, Julian listened to the witcher’s tales of fighting monsters, breaking curses, and saving innocent maidens. In the winter, he wrote those tales down, tweaking them up a bit to make them more appealing when he retold them in the family gatherings.

Eventually, though, the witcher stopped appearing.

Eventually, Julian parted to Oxenfurt.

Eventually, after decades of the owner of the neighboring property not showing up, the Viscount de Lettenhove inherited those lands, which was a relief for everyone. No one else wanted the property, anyway.

He kept it, though. Under his name, but never really his; he kept servants that to maintain it, make the necessary house restorations—realizing, perhaps far too late, how terrible it must have been to have to care to such a big chunk of land all alone.

He never saw his witcher neighbor again.

When he met his second witcher, Jaskier was certain of two things: he would not let this one go, and he would care for him the way every one of his kind deserved to be cared for.


End file.
